What is possibly my favorite movie of all time is also the film which most fully encapsulates not only the noir genre, but also the sheer romanticism of what cinema is about. It is dark, atmospheric and gloriously passionate. The strange tale of post-war Vienna is compelling, slightly macabre and never less than a beautiful spectacle to behold. Every time I watch it I learn something new and my love for it, and film-making, grows.
In the ruins of the historic European city the American pulp fiction writer, Holly Martins, arrives on a train to meet his childhood friend, Harry Lime. Entering Harry's flat the porter informs him that he has been killed, run over by a truck while crossing the street to meet a friend. Holly arrives at the cemetery in time to see the coffin being lowered into the plot.
A man who Holly later learns is an army inspector of the British district invites him for drinks and gives Holly information about his friend that no man would want to hear. After the War Vienna was in a state of disarray, occupied by four outside powers, but with no real law and order. Smuggling and racketeering became rampant and Harry seized the opportunity to make some easy money through means one can only describe as monstrous. The good friend that Holly is, he seeks to show the inspector wrong and prove Harry's innocence.
Things are not all they seem, however, as Holly enters an underground world of intrigue, full of hushed whispers, thunderous echoes and deep shadows. When Harry's death begins to look less and less like a accident his would-be detective skills, honed in from years of writing cheap Western novels, bring him in contact with duplicitous characters that delve him further into a dangerous world for which he is not prepared to cope.
The mystery unfolds slowly and suspensefully, never giving away more than it needs to and sometimes less than that. The amazing, rubble-strewn locations set the backdrop upon which a praised man is painted ugly and the lengths that a friend and a lover will go to wipe the smudges clean. There are some stains, however, that simply won't erase. Holly meets Harry's love interest, the Czech beauty Anna Schmidt, and the two must deal with the disillusionment of their perfect image of their mutual friend while also dealing with attraction forming between the two of them.
This film is one of the touch-stones of cinema. It is told so carefully, with its incredibly full, rich script from Graham Greene which is presented expertly by director Carol Reed. There are so many subtleties missed on a first viewing which make it all the more interesting as time goes on. Motifs of animals, fingers creeping out of storm drains, the complexity of several of Anna's lines fold layer after layer of puzzling mystery into an already mysterious puzzle.
It features an amazing cast to fill in what would already have been a superb film without them. Joseph Cotton is Holly Martins, Alida Valli as Anna, Trevor Howard plays Maj. Calloway and Orson Welles, though having minimal screen-time, gives what I believe his iconic and most interesting performance as the third man (not least of all because he ad-libbed the ridiculously clever "cuckoo clock" line).
The silly, yet unique zither score, the art direction and most especially the cinematography is what is most well known about this film. The classic scenes on the boulevard, in the sewers, on the Ferris wheel are so well recognized due to the technical achievements that went into capturing their magic. There is always a constant battle in this movie with the terrible and the humorous, and with delicious tongue-and-cheek these elements enhance Reed's statements about the lasting effects of war and the dichotomies of the human mind.
"The Third Man" is one of those enduring classics which has been ripped off endlessly by inferior films. Never have I watched a film which has harnessed the very essence of the noir genre so completely (albeit unintentionally as the term was not yet coined). I envy the person who gets to watch this film for the first time, but I take solace in the fact that it does not diminish with age, it simply finds some new, black corridor to lead me down.
4/4
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